Software tools, such as InDesign™, produced by Adobe Systems Incorporated of San Jose, Calif., are commonly used in the publishing industry to create a variety of print media-based items such as books, magazines, flyers, brochures, etc. These tools allow designers and editors to create containers into which the content (e.g., text, images, vector objects, etc.) is introduced. Stories (defined by the various content items) then flow across containers. The collection of containers and their arrangement defines the layout of the book, magazine or other item being created.
Tools such as InDesign support multiple output formats, for example Adobe's portable document format (pdf) and flash format (swf), including even some proprietary or third party markup language formats (e.g., InDesign markup language (IDML)) and electronic publication formats. However, it remains the case that all or virtually all of the outputs provided by these software tools are provided with a print media representation for the content layout in mind. That is, even the markup language or electronic publication files produced by the tools are created based on visual representations of the content on a plane (such as a page) and not in semantically meaningful ways that allow for reflowing, reordering, reorganizing and/or reorienting, etc., of the content when viewed on electronic devices such as desktop computer screens, laptop computer screens, smartphones, table computers, and the like.